I feel very sappy about this whole experiment. Space exploration is something I've always enjoyed in science fiction, but never considered on a practical level. Hearing music written, practiced and performed while one person is in space and the other is on earth... it just made the thought of living somewhat normally so far above the earth a little more possible. It's made me dream.

Jul. 1st, 2009

Canada Day post-mortem

OMG what a busy day! I wish I'd remembered to tell my American clients I wasn't working today--by the time I thought of it, I already had a full plate, so I just plowed on through.

Things that made me go "huh": the plural of gallows is gallowses. And gallow is a completely different word that means "to terrify." Huh.

I also found that Kingdom affects me faster than valium. It's Stephen Fry dealing with quirky neighbours in their quaint seaside village and making Everything.Work.Out. I know it's completely fanciful and terribly unrealistic, and its homespun wisdom really should annoy me, but for some reason it just soothes my soul.

Which I need at the moment because there are two lonely trombone players wandering around (drunk, I would guess) on the street below. I guess they got separated from the rest of the band on Parliament Hill? I don't know, I have no idea what to do with them, but they seem lost and keep wandering up and down the block.

May. 18th, 2009

Monday mix

Third, for omarandjohnny, did you read about Russell Tovey's new show? And that picture is slightly misleading, don't you think? My heart sped up a bit when I thought "a comedy where Russell and Aidan never leave the bedroom? Hell yeah!"

Fourth, in lieu of writing, I mainlined the latest seasons of The Tudors and Ashes to Ashes this weekend. The first has turned awfully dark and delicious, the latter's surprisingly turned as brilliant as Life On Mars. Now I need some new Gene Genie icons!

Fifth, probably the high point of this weekend is something I can't talk about. Which is totally unfair, but there you go. Still, it's got me giggling and shaking my head even now.

Canada Day Picspam, Pt. 1

mood: sleepy

music: Leonard Cohen - Tower of Song

Happy Canada Day!

To celebrate our national holiday, I thought I'd treat you all to some of the natural beauty of our provinces. And, um, I might have got a little carried away. The result? Two photo-heavy posts of some of my favourite Canadians.

Jun. 27th, 2008

National identity v. 2.0

mood: geeky

This morning I submitted my application for my first Canadian passport! The guy who processed it was so sweet, he kept congratulating me. (And even after living here for six years, I still find French accents incredibly sexy.)

Nov. 24th, 2007

Titles are too much for my poor brain

mood: stupid

music: Cocteau Twins - Cherry-coloured Funk

Darn it! I forgot to pay my phone bill. The bill's been sitting here on my coffee table for a month, underneath my knitting project that I haven't touched for a month. I really should clean more often. Or maybe just knit more.

I have to hand it to the ex. As much as he tries to resist the whole fanfic scene, sometimes he comes up with the best plot bunnies. He just called me up wanting an HP adaptation of Bon Cop, Bad Cop with Harry as the uptight Ontarian Auror and Ron as the Quebecois Auror who goes around muttering "caulice!" and getting him out of fixes. This thought is amusing me greatly. No one outside Canada will get this at all.

Sep. 30th, 2007

Is it the weekend yet?

mood: sleepy

I swear, my plan to take yesterday off and have a long weekend completely backfired.

It started with getting the post in the morning and finding a long-awaited letter from the IRS. (For my new friends, the quick story is that when I moved to Canada I mistakenly paid my taxes to the US; I was audited by the Canadian Revenue Agency last year and had to pay them instead, and I'm entitled to a refund of what I paid the US. I filed this in March and it's supposed to take 6-8 weeks to process.) Unfortunately the letter wasn't the $6000 refund that they owe me; no, it said that they understand that I live in Canada now and paid them in error, but before they can give me my money back they want confirmation from the Canadian government that I'm covered under the social security plan up here. The accountant who prepared my taxes says he's done US returns for 8 years and has never heard of such a thing; the CRA says that this would be a huge administrative burden and they don't provide such a thing. Nonetheless, the woman at the IRS who I finally talked to after waiting on hold for an ungodly length of time said that they can't begin to process my refund until I get something official.

What really gets me about this whole thing (besides the fact that if I owed them $6K they wouldn't be so lackadaisical about waiting six months!) is the assumption that I'm going to be unfairly demanding social security from the US someday. I've known for a decade that that'll be gone waaaaay before it's time for me to collect.

To cheer myself up, I decided to go vote. That helped some, just to remind myself of why I like living up here better than down south. Polls are open every day in Ontario, 9am-9pm, have been for a week and will be up until the 10/10 election. They make it so freaking easy to vote! I walk in, I get handed the paper ballot, and I mark my choice in the big circle by the candidate's name -- none of those pesky issues with lining up ballots or making sure the lines/names match (even in uber-liberal Washington state this could be confusing). Afterwards I told the election officers that I was voting for the first time -- they seemed so tickled about that!

Figuring my day was pretty well shot by that point, I decided to trek over to IKEA. Seriously, I'm glad I wasn't having my blood pressure checked yesterday, because between the IRS and IKEA, I'm sure I was off the scale. I don't know what it is about that store that brings out the stupid in shoppers. However, I did end up getting a mattress -- that they were able to deliver this afternoon!! -- and escaping with most of my sanity intact.

Today (after watching SGA again) I finally got down to writing. I wanted to take part in the phoenix_flies drabble-a-thon, but I felt too guilty that I wasn't working on my own story. I'm determined to stay two chapters ahead of what I'm posting, just in case I need to go back and make any changes. I'm pretty well on track after today, at least if I can manage to finish off this chapter tomorrow.

In any case, I just posted Chapter 3 of "Architects of Memory" in my fic journal. I really enjoyed writing this chapter, it had a lot of very clear visual images, at least in my head; I really hope that translated into the writing!

And I think that's it for me. I'm going to go test drive my comfy new mattress now. Good night, everybody!